Concept

Ivy Compton-Burnett

Summary
Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett, (ˈkʌmptən; 5 June 1884 27 August 1969) was an English novelist, published in the original editions as I. Compton-Burnett. She was awarded the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son. Her works consist mainly of dialogue and focus on family life among the late Victorian or Edwardian upper middle class. Ivy Compton-Burnett was born in Pinner, Middlesex, on 5 June 1884, as the seventh of twelve children of a well-known homeopathic physician and prolific medical author, Dr James Compton-Burnett (the names were hyphenated and pronounced 'Cumpton-Burnit', 1840–1901) by his second wife, Katharine (1855–1911), daughter of civil engineer, surveyor and architect (many of the best houses built [in Dover] between 1850 and 1860 were his") Rowland Rees, who was also Mayor of Dover. Given the subjects of most of her works, it was widely assumed that the Compton-Burnett family were landed gentry; in his review of the final volume of Hilary Spurling's biography, J. I. M. Stewart wrote: "this persuasion she did nothing to controvert... when her ardent admirer and close friend Robert Liddell engaged in a somewhat demeaning rummage in Burke and Crockford in search of distinguished Compton-Burnetts whether living or dead and gone, he was astonished to discover none at all. Both Burnetts and Comptons had in fact been farm labourers not many generations back, and Mrs Spurling thinks that Ivy must have been about thirty before seeing the inside of an English country house." According to Spurling, "Ivy's... friends in later life generally assumed that she came, as the families do in her books, of a long line of country squires." In fact "she had moved with her family four times before she was 14, living on housing estates or in brand new suburban developments, hearing practically nothing about her Compton Burnett relations.
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